1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for processing a silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material, more specifically, the present invention relates to a processing method where a used bleach-fixing solution is regenerated and used to reduce the amount of waste solution and also reduce the running cost. The present invention relates to a processing composition for a silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material, more specifically, the present invention relates to a solid bleach-fixing composition for a silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, in order to provide quick services to general users and rationalize the collection/delivery transportation between a photo-shop and a processing laboratory, an automatic processor called a mini-lab is abruptly spreading, which is installed at the front of a photo-shop and performs the processing of a photographic light-sensitive material. Conventionally, a liquid concentrate has been supplied as the processing agent for mini-lab use, but this processing agent is a liquid and therefore, has problems such as regulation at the transportation, danger of the container breakage due to impact, inconvenience in handling at the processing laboratory and restriction in the storing space. In order to solve these problems, studies are being made on, for example, a granular processing agent in JP-A-2-109042, a tablet processing agent in JP-A-5-127322 and a processing method of directly adding a solid processing agent to a processing tank in JP-A-5-188533. According to these methods, since the processing agent is a solid, the size and weight of the processing agent can be greatly reduced as compared with a liquid-type processing agent and this is very advantageous in view of transportation and storage but at the same time, new problems are incurred, that is, when stored in aging, a solid bleach-fixing agent using a hygroscopic fixing agent deliquesces to impair the stability, whereas a solid processing agent using a non-hygroscopic fixing agent is solidified by undergoing consolidation with each other. Furthermore, it is revealed that insoluble matters are generated when the solid agent is dissolved.
JP-A-6-186686 discloses a technique of preventing deliquescence by incorporating a mesoion compound together with a thiosulfate fixing agent into the solid fixing agent for the processing of a black-and-white light sensitive material. However, the object of JP-A-6-186686 is only to prevent deliquescence of the solid fixing agent and the problems of consolidation or generation of insoluble matters encountered in using a solid bleach-fixing agent, which are to be solved in the present invention, are not referred to at all. Thus, those problems which are to be solved in the present invention cannot be overcome by the technique disclosed in this patent publication.
Heretofore, a solid bleach-fixing agent succeeded in simultaneously solving all of the problems of deliquescence, consolidation and generation of insoluble matters has not been found.
In a method for processing a silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material, the used processing solution is generally discarded as an overflow solution, but in the overflow solution, effective components are remaining and therefore, a large number of studies are being made on a so-called regeneration technique of adding lacking components consumed in the processing to enable reuse of the solution and again using it as a replenisher. The recycling as a replenisher by using the overflow solution can realize not only resource saving and cost reduction because of use of chemicals is a small amount as compared with the case of newly preparing a replenisher, but also great reduction of the environmental load value resulting from decrease in the amount of overflow solution discarded, and therefore, this method is preferred in view of environmental conservation.
However, the technique of regenerating the overflow solution cannot be easily developed. Particularly, the bleach-fixing solution is considered highly difficult to regenerate. More specifically, the bleach-fixing solution generally contains at least three functional chemicals, that is, an aminopolycarboxylic acid iron (III) complex as the bleaching agent, a thiosulfate as the fixing agent, and a sulfite as the preservative. The overflow solution of the bleach-fixing solution further contains silver ion and color developer components carried over from the previous bath and at the same time, contains a ferrous aminopolycarboxylate. The reuse of this solution is accompanied with desilvering retardation, leuconization (leuco dye reciprocity failure) of cyanine dye, or undesired staining (staining of white base) due to accumulation of halogen ion or silver ion, accumulation of ferrous aminopolycarboxylate, accumulation of developer components, or accumulation of sulfate generated resulting from oxidation of sulfite ion.
A method of reducing silver ion by electrolysis and recovering it is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,014,764. Also in this case, the iron(III) complex is simultaneously reduced into an iron(II) complex or sulfite ion at the anode is oxidized into sulfate ion, as a result, desilvering failure or leuco dye reciprocity failure is readily generated and at the same time, the stability of the solution decreases.
Also, a technique of regenerating an overflow solution by reducing the equilibrium accumulated amount of silver ion through dilution or the like without positively removing silver is disclosed in JP-A-48-49437 and JP-A-50-145231. This is a simple and inexpensive method because the regeneration and reuse can be realized without using a special apparatus for silver recovery. However, in this method, desilvering retardation is caused due to accumulation of silver halide dissolved out from the light-sensitive material, particularly, silver bromide dissolved out in a large amount, and furthermore, undesired staining or browning is readily generated due to accumulation of developer components. Thus, this method has a problem in the stability of running performance.